California homes selling well as prices dip

The San Francisco Business Times reports home sales in California continue to rise as there was a 9.2 percent increase in purchases from October to November.

The numbers from the California Association of Realtors shows that, though better sales may show positive signs for California's residential real estate market, the group said prices are down from both October and November 2009.

CAR president Beth Peerce described the short sales - when a home is sold for less than what is owed on the mortgage - as being "notoriously difficult to navigate with no guarantee of closure," noting that two out of five short sales fail to close.

The report said the median price of an existing, detached, single family home in California diminished to $296,820. This marks the first time since February in which the price fell below $300,000.

On Wednesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported in their monthly House Price Index that US home prices rose 0.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from September to October.